Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), which makes Sony TVs, HP printers and Apple’s iPhones and iPads, on Friday reported a 20-month high in revenue for last month as the company increased production to meet growing demand.
The Taipei-based company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange after the closure of the local stock market that its unconsolidated sales last month increased 54.22 percent year-on-year and 20.92 percent month-on-month to NT$197.41 billion (US$6.15 billion).
Last month’s figure was the highest since October 2008, when Hon Hai posted NT$169.38 billion in revenue for the month, according to the company’s financial data.
The results of soaring revenue came after the company announced a substantial increase in wages for its Chinese production-line workers early last month and followed a profit warning by its handset-making unit, Foxconn International Holdings Ltd (富士康控股) on June 29.
In the first six months of the year, the world’s biggest electronics contract manufacturer saw its unaudited revenue expand 56.96 percent year-on-year to NT$929.31 billion, the company said in the stock exchange filing.
On a quarterly basis, the revenue of NT$514.54 billion from April to last month also marked a record-high quarterly level in the company’s history.
Ahead of Friday’s sales figures, analysts had already forecast that Hon Hai’s revenue drivers would remain intact amid recovering global demand, especially that of key products such as the iPad, which surpassed market expectations.
Morgan Stanley analyst Jasmine Lu (呂智穎) attributed her positive view on Hon Hai’s revenue outlook to rising shipment forecasts of the iPhone and iPad as well as a better-than-expected corporate demand for desktops, servers and storage, where Hon Hai has greater exposure through HP and Dell.
In a note to clients on June 30, Lu said she expected Hon Hai’s full-year consolidated revenue to reach NT$2.6 trillion this year, up 32.7 percent from NT$1.96 trillion last year. Earlier last month, JPMorgan analyst Gokul Hariharan also raised his revenue growth forecasts for Hon Hai by 3 percent each this year and next year to NT$2.69 trillion and NT$3.17 trillion, respectively.
Shares of Hon Hai edged up 0.42 percent at NT$120.5 in Friday trading before the release of the revenue figures. So far this year, the stock has declined 20.46 percent, compared with the benchmark TAIEX’s 6.61-percent fall over the same period.
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